On The Run
by That Crazy Hippie Gurl
Summary: Dawn, Damion and Lucas are traveling together. Team Galactic ambushes them and Lucas is captured! Dawn and Damion have to get their friend back, with the help of a Team Galactic deserter, Haley. Might be some Dawn/Damion romance near the end. Please read!
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

_Crack! _

My head snapped up, and I scanned the snow-covered trees for the source of the noise. Ever since Team Galactic had taken over Sinnoh, and then captured my best friend, Lucas, I'd been very jumpy, certain that Damion (my other best friend) and I would be next. The three of us had, after all, been most active in undermining their schemes. A shadow flitted from one tree to the other. A humanoid shadow. It wasn't Lucas, who'd been captured. It wasn't Damion, who was in the house, still unconscious from Team Galactic's attack. No one else knew we were here. It was either a random stranger or a Team Galactic goon. Better safe than sorry. I nodded at Zora, my Lucario, who was on guard duty with me. Then I called toward the forest.

"You in the trees! Show yourself!"

The shadow made no response. Zora jumped up and sniffed the air, trying to pinpoint the shadow's location. I decided to give it another chance.

"If you don't show yourself, I'll assume you're a bad guy and my Lucario will drag you out."

The shadow melted out of the trees and solidified into a young woman, barely older than me. She had shoulder length aqua hair and deep brown eyes. She was wearing what would have looked like a space suit, except that it was not bulky. She was a Team Galactic grunt; they all looked like this. This girl was a member of the group that went around stealing Pokémon from innocent trainers and menacing society by wearing those _ridiculous_ outfits, not to mention they'd captured and done who-knows-what to one of my best friends.

I snarled. So did Zora, and hers was much more impressive. She stalked forward silently to battle the girl. Zora had seen how Pokémon suffer at the hands of Team Galactic, and she felt no mercy for them. At times like this, I realized just how glad I was that she was on my side; when Zora was angry, she was terrifying.

The girl backed up a step, glancing from Zora to me, and said shakily,

"I have no Pokémon. I won't hurt you, so please don't hurt me."

I looked at Zora for confirmation. Her ability to sense auras meant that she could read thoughts and understand all human languages. And, of course, communicate telepathically.

_I sense no insincerity from her. You are safe. _Zora told me. Then she came up out of her battle crouch and backed up toward me, still studying the girl, a mixture of wariness and curiosity in her eyes. I knew what she was thinking. The girl might not be about to leap at our throats, but she was still one of Team Galactic. Then Zora glanced sharply at the house behind us. Hesitating, she looked back and studied the girl for another moment, then went inside. Before I could begin to formulate a question, she was gone.

The girl looked curiously at the door Zora had vanished through. "What was all that about?"

"No idea," I answered curtly.

She noticed this and raised her hands in defense. "Look, I'm not Team Galactic."

I raised an eyebrow at the hair and suit and retorted, "It's a little late for Halloween."

She elaborated. "I was part of Team Galactic, but I left them. At first I agreed with their plan to destroy this world and create a new one, but then I saw what they were prepared to do to attain their goals. I left."

"But that's not the only reason, is it?" I guessed. For whatever reason, I was really good at reading peoples' faces and body language, and maybe some of Zora's ability had rubbed off on me, but I could tell this girl wasn't being entirely truthful.

A shadow crossed her face and she bit her lip. She studied me for a moment, then seemed to come to a decision.

"Okay," she said. "I might as well tell you everything. My name is Haley. I joined Team Galactic almost a year ago. My Croagunk didn't want to, but he came with me. My job was to go around and convince people to join us. After nearly a year, I'd recruited thirty-four people, more than anyone else with my job.

"Then I got a new job. We were getting ready to take the lake Pokémon and I was supposed to help keep people out of the Lake Acuity area. But the boy with the white hair-"

"Damion." I interrupted.

"Yes, Damion. He showed up and defeated all of us before falling to Commander Jupiter. We were all punished for our failures, and they-" Haley stopped, seemingly unable to go on. Her face pinched up, and I could tell she was reliving a painful memory. I couldn't help putting a hand on her shoulder- I felt a strange connection with Haley.

"What happened?" I asked, feeling compassion and genuine curiosity. Haley was obviously the tough, determined sort; what could have happened to break her calm mask with only the memory?

"They- they… took Croagunk. I just woke up one morning and he wasn't there. Commander Mars had had a grunt sneak into my room and take him while I was asleep. They wouldn't give him back; they said I was 'undeserving'. They said if I was so desperate for a Pokémon, I should just go and steal one like the other grunts. I had stood by and watched them steal Pokémon before and it hadn't bothered me much, but I realized then how wrong it was. So I left. I decided I would get other Pokémon, then come back and challenge them. I would get Croagunk back if I could.

"Char?" A low, growling voice interrupted us. I whirled around; I knew that voice.

A Charmeleon jumped out from behind a rock. "Char! Char-charmeleon!" My friend greeted me.

"Does she know you?" Haley asked me.

"Yeah." I said, and launched into the story. I told her how Team Galactic had chased us (Damion, Lucas, and I) through the Coronet Range's cave systems. We'd taken the main path, which led more or less straight through the range, and then we'd decided to follow a side path to lose our pursuers, ignoring the stories of how many people had gotten lost in the labyrinth. Well, of course we'd gotten lost, and we'd been wandering aimlessly for around an hour. Then my Houndoom, Kati, found an injured Charmeleon, which was odd because they didn't live in this region. We'd stopped to help her, and when she had healed, she showed us the way out of the caves.

Once we were out of the range, we were ambushed by Team Galactic. They'd captured Lucas and knocked out Damion. They would have gotten him, too, and then me, but I'd gotten my Pokémon to dig a hole in the snow just beyond the fringe of the forest, which we hid in. With the falling snow and the confusion of the ambush, nobody had noticed and they'd left shortly, thinking we'd escaped.

I had found an old house a few miles away, one that was once used as a resting place for weary travelers. It had been hastily abandoned, probably soon after the Team Galactic takeover three weeks previously. Abandoned with it was a month's supply of canned and dried food, and I'd decided we should stay there, that is, here, until Damion woke up and then we could figure out how to get Lucas back. We'd been here four days since, and I was starting to worry that Damion wouldn't wake up.

In those four days, I had organized a guard shift. Two Pokémon, or sometimes one Pokémon accompanied by me, would stay outside at all times and watch for Team Galactic goons. Damion's Pokémon decided among themselves that one of their number would remain by his side at all times, waiting for him to wake up.

Just as I finished my story, Zora came out of the house.

_Come_, she told me.

"What is it?" I asked, slightly nervous. Had Damion…

_Come_. She repeated, the thought completely devoid of emotion.

Still nervous, I followed her inside.

There didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary- the refrigerator, stove and sink stood against the east wall, two bedroom doors on the west wall, and a long table and a bunch of chairs took up most of the north wall, with a space for the bathroom door. Against the south wall, a couch and a few chairs were grouped around the fireplace. There were windows in every wall, and the only outside entrance was in the western corner of the south wall, and I raced through it now.

Since no problem presented itself to me immediately, I decided it must be Damion. I skidded into his room. There he was, on the lower bunk of one of the two bunk beds in the room. Only something was different.

His eyes were open.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I gaped at Damion for a moment, then flung myself across the room. I sat on the edge of his bed, wrapped my arms around him, and buried my face in his shoulder, half laughing, half crying from relief.

He hugged me back, but muttered, "Jeez, Dawn, get a grip. It's not like I was going to die."

I sat up, composed once again, and retorted, "Yeah, but I didn't know that. And your Pokémon were just as worried. They all took turns sitting here waiting for you to wake up. You haven't been alone for the past four days."

Damion's Lucario nodded, his red eyes catching the light.

"I've been here four days?" Damion yelped. Then he frowned, looking around the room. "Hang on, where is here?"

So I explained what had happened and where we were. He groaned.

"What's wrong?" I demanded. "Are you still hurt?"

"No, but I'm really, really hungry." He struggled to sit up, then sank back down, groaning again. "And whenever I move my head, it feels like someone's jamming a knife right here." He pointed at an area slightly behind his right temple.

I swore I would make Mars pay for this; she had knocked him out by hitting him in the head with a rock. I snorted in disgust. How barbaric could you get?

X X X X X

About an hour later Damion, Haley and I were eating breakfast in the main room, along with some of our Pokémon- my Venomoth, named Liza, and a Kirlia, named Kade. Damion's Gardevoir, Erica, was here, along with the Charmeleon, who had decided to join Haley. The other members of our teams had gone outside to find their own food. I was pretty sure Zora, Kati, my Houndoom, and Damion's Staraptor were chowing down on fish- there was a river nearby that ran too fast to freeze in the winter. The others were probably looking for berries.

Damion, Haley and I had pulled chairs up to the counter and we were all munching on the pancakes I'd made.

"I never knew you could cook, Dawn," Damion mumbled around some pancake.

"Well," I replied, "Neither did I, but anyone can follow directions on a box- Eww, close your mouth!"

Damion clamped his mouth shut, swallowed, and jeered, "Sure, _Mom_!" Which earned him a swat on the shoulder from me. I nodded in mock approval and teased back, "And don't you forget it!"

Haley giggled. "The way you two act... you remind me of my brother!"

We chewed in silence for a few more minutes, then Haley spoke up again. "If you are going to invade Team Galactic's headquarters, I'm coming."

I gaped. "What! After you deserted them? If they find you, you're dead meat."

"Fine." She retorted. "How are you getting in?"

"Ummm, well-"

"Exactly." Haley said, cutting across me. "You need my help. I can get you in, I know which grunts I can trust, and, besides that, I'm not getting Croagunk back by sitting around doing nothing!"

I hesitated. "Well…"

"Well, nothing!" Damion interrupted. "Dawn, we need help. You know it."

For once in his life, Damion was deadly serious. And I knew he was right.

"Yeah," I finally agreed. "We need help."

Haley looked relieved. "Good." She said. "Now, I really think-"

But the rest of her words were drowned out by a loud noise. It was somewhere between a hiss and a hum, and seemed to be coming from behind the house. Then there was a loud clunk, and the noise ceased.

"What the…." Damion muttered. We all shared a glance, then went outside to check it out.

There was nothing to be seen behind the house. We looked around curiously for a few minutes, then I realized something. "The heater!" I exclaimed. "It's not on."

Haley and Damion pried a panel off of the heater and Damion peered inside. He fiddled with a few wires, twisted something, and muttered, more to himself than us, "There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the heater… so if nothing's wrong with it….. that most likely means that the problem is the battery."

"How do you know that?" I asked, impressed.

"Well," Damion replied, still peering inside, "Before my dad took off to battle at the Battle Tower, he was a mechanic. I used to help him fix things. Hmmm….. Yeah, it's definitely the battery. Look." And he popped the battery out and set it on the ground for Haley and I to inspect.

I eyed the buildup of grayish stuff caking those knobbish protrusions that are on batteries. "It's corroded."

Damion nodded. "The terminals- those little knob things- are completely covered in crap. I could clean it off and it would work again, but I think it's broken. And, as I never learned how to fix a broken battery, I think it's safer not to try. Wouldn't want to blow us up by mistake."

"It couldn't have been because of the solar panels, could it?" I asked. We got all of our electricity from the solar panels, and if they broke too, we were in trouble.

Damion shook his head. "No, the lights were still on when the heater died. This is entirely this battery's fault."

Haley scowled at the inert heater. "We can't just go get another battery, either. If we go out in public, Team Galactic will catch us in five seconds flat. So we need to conserve heat now." She rubbed her forehead, which she did whenever she was thinking hard. "Hmmm… Hey! Guys, I have an idea!"

Damion and I looked at her expectantly. "Well?" Damion said. "Spit it out!"

Haley appeared to be sizing up the nearest snowdrift. "We could pile snow around the house, disguise it as a hill. It would insulate it, as well as hiding it from unwelcome visitors."

I thought about it for a minute. "I think it's a great idea- but hang on, what about the door and the windows?"

"We could leave a tunnel from the door to the edge of the mound and cover up the opening with something." Haley replied, using her hands to demonstrate. "And the same for the windows."

Damion spotted the next problem. "What about the solar panels?"

That stumped Haley for a minute. We all sat down on a fallen tree that we used for a bench and contemplated the problem.

A minute later I spoke up. "Couldn't we just move the panels?"

Damion smacked his head. "Duh! Why didn't we think of that sooner? We could pull them off easily and put them somewhere else, as long as they were connected to the batteries by a wire, and we could bury that in the ground."

So we got to work. Three days later, we were living in a snow hill. The house was entirely covered in a hard-packed snow wall that was three or four feet thick, and roughly dome-shaped. The solar panels were placed in a clearing in the forest, connected by a wire. As Haley had suggested, there was a hole for the door, which we covered up. Damion had figured out how to hide it. We dug up a big bush, then planted it in front of the hole. Easy. The entrance was completely obscured, and all we had to do to get in and out was push a branch aside.

The windows were harder. We covered up most of them with snow to conserve heat, but left four- one in the bedroom we all shared, and three in the main room- one in each direction, so we could see outside without going outside. The problem was disguising those four. Haley came up with that solution. We cut up the sheets from one of the spare beds and stuffed a piece in the 'tunnel' to each window. We were lucky the windows were so small, or it wouldn't have worked. All we had to do was open the window, stuff the sheet in and close the window. We usually left the windows uncovered, but covered them every night, and we decided that if anyone approached the hill, the Pokémon or people guarding it at the time would alert us and we would conceal them. Provided the hill wasn't examined too closely, no one would ever realize there was a house in it. And why would anyone examine a hill?

X X X X X

Pokémon Teams:

Dawn  Damion

Venomoth- Liza (Female) Gardevoir- Erica (Female)

Luxray- Leah (Shiny, female) Infernape- Jared (Male)

Floatzel- Kylee (Female) Empoleon (Female)

Kirlia- Kade (Male) Lucario- Taren (Male)

Lucario- Zora (Female) Garchomp (Female)

Houndoom- Kati (Female) Flygon (Female)

Lucas

Floatzel-Alex (Male)

Rapidash- Zane (Male)

Torterra (Male)

Staraptor (Female)

Snorlax (Male)

Heracross (Male)


End file.
